Which ones? I used more than one model. At best treating the NT as the sample space enables a few statistical techniques that provide support for better models (like real Bayesian statistics).
Contrary to your assumption, I am not so completely inept I would use a frequency analysis rather than at least one adequate statistical analysis. I work with multivariate models and statistics quite a bit. But you asked me to leave out details, and simply listing names like "pattern theory" or "permutation tests" is worthless. So now, without details, you can dismiss evidence.
1) Here's Carrier: "Paul will be expected to mostly use just brother, when it can be understood from context what he means, because ancient writers understood that pleonasm was to be avoided unless it served a purpose; but such a purpose could include the equally admired practice of variatio, an element of ancient rhetorical style (to occasionally change your idiom)."
Here's Carrier on Paul's purpose: "Possibly he means only I met no other apostle except brother James simply for rhetorical variation, but avoids the intimate abbreviation brother and inputs the coldly formal pleonasm instead, possibly even to emphasize his lack of intimacy with James."
His statement about "ancient writers understood" is based on ancient rhetorical theory. So first we have to assume Paul was trained in rhetoric, and then we assume an ad hoc reason about a "coldly formal pleonasm".
2) He responds here to a question about expecting more uses "brothers of the lord" with
"We wouldnt expect there to be. This would have been common knowledge to him and his readers and thus never require explicitly stating it. To the contrary, the evidence we have, is basically the kind of evidence we would expect to have (see my comments on the stylistic issue and the matter of avoiding fastidiousness and pleonasm in particular)."
Here's a definition of pleonasm (see sect. 2.1).
There is are several books (e.g., here) that analyze texts where we find pleonasm or something very similar. Basically, if there are regular ways of saying something, and we find one that adds more than needed, we should always see what might motivate the irregularity.
Carrier does. He makes one up.
3) He isn't the expert here. He's an expert on ancient rhetorical theory, but pleonasm isn't a part of rhetorical theory. The OED gives the earliest sense of the word as "Catalan pleonasme (14th cent.)", and etymologically traces to post-classical Latin.
He's dealing with the semantics of pleonasm in linguistic theories (see e.g., the paper I linked to with the definition). He's not a linguist, and as the semantic approaches range from register to being pretty much replaced by markedness theories, he is outside of his realm of expertise. Moreover, his explanation of this semantic pleonasm is ad hoc and contradicts his own description elsewhere.
Why would it be undetectable? He published a paper on the "interpolation" of AJ 20.200.
The line:
{ἕτερον δὲ τῶν ἀποστόλων} οὐκ εἶδον, εἰ μὴ Ἰάκωβον τὸν ἀδελφὸν τοῦ κυρίου
If we remove the "except James" clause, we have problems.
The first clause is unnecessarily complicated. The brackets are an NP that by itself is odd. It says "other of the apostles", adding a "other" and the necessary genitive it heads, instead of just using a direct object: "I didn't see any apostles". The other clause, which is grammatically complex, makes the first needed (or, rather, with both clauses the first now makes sense). Now Paul is emphasizing that he didn't see any apostles while with Peter except James. Both clauses are tightly linked to one another grammatically and stylistically, so the whole line would have to go.
But were that the case, why not just insert "I saw James"? Why insert two clauses coordinated in a rather complex way that make sense in context but aren't needed for an interpolator? If we cut out the "brother" part, we loose the ability know which James Paul refers to, and we still have a grammatically complex line which only makes sense in context.
Finally, there's the issue of manuscript traditions. By the time we have our earliest manuscript evidence, there were many, many more manuscripts and belonging to varying manuscript traditions/families. So if there was interpolation, it would mean that several scribes behind our manuscript families independently changed the line in exactly the same way. And all did so despite the fact that James being Jesus' brother was a hugely contentious issue among Christians from Paul to today.
Which is kind of odd if your interpolation theory is correct. Why not insert more instances of James the brother? Also, the gospels depict a mostly hostile relationship between Jesus and his family, but to go into that would mean details. Let me know if you want them.
In the same text and dealing with the same topic, he first states that he has a command which he says is not his but the Lord's, and then later states he has a command and is careful to say it is not from the Lord. On yet another matter he states he "has no command from the Lord". If Jesus never existed, we're left Paul receiving commands from a heavenly Jesus, but he chose the wrong cell phone service. If Jesus did exist, and Paul was aware of a historical Jesus' stance on divorce independently attested to in Mark and Q, we don't need resort to Paul having bad reception.
We do, however, have enormous amounts of evidence on the problems with James as brother (including references to Paul showing that he did say this). The record is littered with the issue all relating to Mary's virginity. However, evidence becomes guesses when one is trying to explain away evidence rather than act like a historian.
Amusing.
Early Christians: Mary was a perpetual virgin ergo James can't be his biological brother. Find ways to explain away all the evidence to the contrary.
Mythicists: Jesus wasn't historical ergo James can't be his biological brother. Find ways to explain away all evidence to the contrary.
You want to compare modern scholarship to those like Eusebius. For brevity, 1 example: Meier is a catholic priest who's written 4 volumes on the historical Jesus. In one, he says there simply isn't any good reason for thinking that the Catholic church's stance is correct. He denies his own religious beliefs when using a historical perspective. Mythicists, on the other hand, have a lot in common in their approach to history and with that of the early Christians.
That's one sentence from his study. You don't know the logic used because I have to leave out details. Which means you get to malign Freyne and his "rank speculation" without any clue what his evidence is.
I compared 2 things: His historical methods for Jesus/early Christianity, and his treatment of ancient history apart from these. Have you read any of the latter? If not, your disagreement is nothing more than saying "I disagree with your comparison between some stuff I do know, and how it relates stuff I don't".
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